


If a Jutsu can do it...so can a seal

by RinRynRen



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Fuinjutsu, Gen, Shikako not realizing the impact she has on other people, seals as a replacement for jutsu, transformation jutsu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 15:58:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21448843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RinRynRen/pseuds/RinRynRen
Summary: Rock Lee has never been able to use a henge.  As a side effect of Shikako trying to lose her tails, she gives Lee an experience he had never thought he would get to have.
Relationships: Hyuuga Neji & Rock Lee & Tenten, Rock Lee & Nara Shikako
Comments: 28
Kudos: 793
Collections: Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection, SQ74's Naruto Favs





	If a Jutsu can do it...so can a seal

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was beta'd by runeofluna and Censa! Thank you so much.
> 
> The scene from chapter 101 (chapter 102 when counting the prologue), in DoS, where Shikako drops a henge on Lee with a seal, from Lee’s point of view.

It was a beautiful day, the air crisp and rich, and Lee would always love this time of day more than any other. It had been at this time, before dawn, when Gai-sensei had first promised to help him to become a true ninja. That he would train Lee so that he would be just as good as anyone else, able to truly hold his own against other ninja, like Neji. And he had. 

True, he had lost to Neji again at the first Chunin exams. But he had still made Chunin, at the same time that Neji did even, and losing to Neji now no longer felt like there was something deep inside, suffocating him. After all, he no longer lost every fight, and they were true rivals now. 

And it was in moments like this, the glorious springtime of his youth shining around him, that he felt peace in a way that most people, still sleeping, would never experience. 

It only made the morning better when Shikako dropped out of the trees to join him on his run. He was still warming up, and so was she. Perhaps she would be interested in sparring with him—Tenten and Neji would not be joining him for some hours, so he was currently lacking a partner. Ga-sensei might be in the village but now that they were Chunin, he had been called out for more solo jobs, and Lee had not seen him for several days. Not that he would hesitate to spar with her even if he did have his team with him! Shikako was a powerful and creative opponent, and was a wonderful challenge to fight, for all that her focus was not in taijutsu. 

“Good morning! Is it not a lovely morning for training?” He asked, beaming brightly at her. Next he would invite her to spar. Tenten had been telling him lately that it was better to greet his fellow ninja and speak with them a bit before asking for a spar. Tenten said that it was because it was that it was good manners. He had gotten twice as many acceptances since he had begun following this advice!

“Sure is. Hey, I’m playing escape-and-evasion with some people, can you help me?” she asked. She didn’t seem worried, although on a second, closer look Shikako did look more focused than she normally was—and Shikako was always focused.

“Yosh! I would be most honored to assist you!” Lee exclaimed, flashing a sparkling smile at her as they ran. And he would be. The fact that Shikako came to him for assistance in this game was deeply heartening. Perhaps they would be sparring with—no, she is evading them, so they would not be sparring. Maybe they could spar after, when this game was over?

“Great, that would be a big help. What I need to do is basically lay a second trail for them to follow, and that’s where you come in,” Shikako said, keeping up with him easily as they continued in the path of his warm up laps. “Would you be willing to henge into me? You wouldn’t need to do anything special, just continue with your normal routine.”

Lee hesitated, shoulders tightening. It was truly an honor, that Shikako thought so highly of him that she completely disregarded his disability, but that did mean that he would not be able to help her as she was requesting.

“I would be most honored, truly. But Shikako, I cannot perform henge.”

There was a pause as Shikako just slowly blinked at him. It was clear that she had completely forgotten about that, and Lee felt bad for having failed her plan already. They continued running, and Shikako did not break off and leave, so Lee cast another glance her way. Shikako looked thoughtful, and considering. 

“I can get around that, actually,” Shikako said decidedly. “Let’s stop, so I can write the seal out.”

The two of them ground to a halt, and Shikako turned her head for a moment to look behind them, clearly checking on the status of the others playing her game with her. 

Lee didn’t mind her taking that moment—his heart was going a little too fast for him to pass it off as normal, for the warm up they had been doing. If Shikako could give him the ability to perform henge, then…that would open up more options for his team. He would be a more effective ninja. He would be able to do something that other people could do easily, and maybe he wouldn’t be able to do it without help, but he would be able to do it.

It would be…amazing.

“May I?” Shikako asked him.

Trying not to appear overly eager, Lee extended his hand to the seal mistress, and watched carefully as she made a slight cut on her arm and then wrote out a seal on his hand in her blood. For a moment nothing happened, and Lee waited patiently. If Shikako said that she could do something, then it would be done, of that he didn’t have any doubt. Shikako burned brightly with her flames of Youth, after all, and could well be trusted. 

Sure enough, she set a transformation jutsu on him, and he felt the seal on his hand grow warm for a only fraction of a second. 

And then he was Shikako. 

Lee knew that a shinobi could perform henge on things other than their own body. But those transformations never lasted long, and were very easy to disrupt because there was nothing to hold it in place. At the academy, he had learned that when a ninja cast henge on themselves, however, they only had to start the jutsu, and then their chakra network would hold the jutsu automatically until either they ran out of chakra, or dropped it.

Lee could neither start the transformation, nor maintain it, with his chakra coils the way that they were. 

Shikako’s seal seemed to circumvent the maintenance aspect of the jutsu, somehow. He would have to take care with his hand and the seal on it so that he could ask Tenten to look at it, once she arrived, to see if this could be replicated. 

Shikako turned into him, and smiled back at him. Lee was grateful that he was almost always cheerful anyway, because if he wasn’t, Shikako might be suspicious of just how excited he was right now, because he was beaming at her so brightly that it was unusual even for him.

“Okay, so just disrupt the seal whenever you want to cancel it. You don’t have to do anything special, just go back to training. Let’s see if they notice, yeah?”

Lee agreed enthusiastically. Hopefully Tenten would arrive earlier than usual, but there were certainly things that he could do to train without using his hands. Focusing on his kicks would work very well for that, or perhaps focus on stamina and just run for longer than normal today?

Shikako waved at him with his own face before turning to head off, focusing on the escaping aspect of her game. Lee continued his run, buzzing with excitement. 

If he could accomplish with seals some general jutsu that he previously could not, then that would open up so many options for their team! He would be less of a burden on them, though he knew that—now—neither of his teammates would acknowledge the fact that his inability to use jutsu or chakra was holding them back, at least a little. And he was so deeply fortunate to have an excellent seal mistress on his very team, as well as Shikako as a friend, so they might be able to recreate this effect!

He ended up simply running for the next hour straight, before launching into a series of exercises that were focused on his kicks and maneuvers right after that. He had noticed a group scattered around the clearing, leaning against the trees, looking desperately relieved that he had stopped running. 

Tenten arrived a short time later, with Neji following behind her, and then froze in sheer confusion at the sight of what was, to her, Shikako running through some of the lotus poses.

“Good morning! Is it not a glorious day!”

“Um,” Tenten managed.

“I have been assisting one of our friends in their youthful endeavor!”

Behind Tenten, Neji activated his Byakugan and frowned heavily at him.

“Lee?” Tenten asked, hesitating slightly.

“Indeed! Shikako created a seal so that I could transform into her for her game of evasion! I believe that she has most certainly won, as the ones that she was evading are all here right now.”

There was some not-so-muffled cursing from the trees around them, then all of the ninja who had been trailing after him for hours, unsure of what had happened, left in a huff. 

“Shikako transformed you?” Tenten asked, leaning forward. “But when we try to set a henge on you they never hold. How long has it been?”

“It has been several hours that I have been in this transformation,” Lee explained, moving over to join his teammates at the side of the training ground, leaving the center area where he had been running through his routine.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” Tenten breathed, and then she and Lee both turned to Neji to see what his opinion was. “Neji? Can you tell what is going on?”

“I can tell that there is a transformation,” the Hyuuga said slowly, “but I can’t quite see underneath it. It is…distorted. I have never seen anything like this.”

“Shikako wrote a seal on my hand,” Lee said, after getting confirmation that they were alone in their training ground now. “Then when she put the transformation on me, the seal grew warm for a second before I stopped noticing it. I have not noticed anything in the henge that would be a giveaway, no glitches or failures.”

“It appears to be a perfect transformation,” Neji said, thoughtful, “if a bit more solid than most.”

“Do you know what seal she used?” Tenten asked, businesslike. 

Lee shook his head, then held his hand out to Tenten. “No. But she wrote it here. She said that all I needed to do to remove it was to disrupt the seal. Will you still be able to understand and recreate it if I do that?”

Tenten nodded. “Try not to completely destroy it, a single line through it will do. And worse comes to worst, I can always just ask Shikako what she did.”

Shikako, it went unsaid, wouldn’t hesitate to tell Tenten, and wouldn’t think anything of it.

Lee carefully drew his fingernail through the line of the seal closest to the base of his palm, and the henge broke instantly. Both Neji and Tenten leaned forward to look at the seal. 

“This is…an anchor?” Tenten asked, leaning forward even more as she muttered the rhetorical question. “Yes, it’s. Literally just an anchor. It’s acting as a false chakra network over your skin to hold the transformation in place, by locking the initial henge in place and then powering it by looping the initial chakra through the seal, because it also locked the chakra when it locked the henge. That’s…so simple.”

“Can you recreate it?” Neji asked, leaning back and taking a step back to begin his stretches. 

“Yes, absolutely.” Tenten clapped her hands together, grinning. “Guys, this opens up so many options.”

Lee beamed at his teammates, so desperately happy and excited. Shikako had given him a glorious gift, and he intended to use it well.


End file.
